Last night I had a dream. In this dream, people were calling somebody insane.
By insane, by the way, I mean what much of the population would tell you is the literal definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I know it’s often in bad taste to tell people about your dreams (or at least it’s boring), but I thought I should tell you about this one. Because I would like to make a point.
This person in my dream—we can call him Amos—started by purchasing a bicycle. He rode it every day. Over and over again. He took the same route. He biked a lot. For the first month or two, he didn’t notice much of a change. But, in the long run, Amos realized his legs were getting bigger and stronger. He could go faster, and farther. In the future, he became a good cyclist.
Amos was a writer, too, in my dream. He spent a summer writing one essay every day and publishing them online. The first thirty, forty, fifty essays did not get any engagement at all. He felt like he was the only person reading his writing, and he was probably right. But then one day, out of the blue, one of his essays went viral. Amos got millions of readers. Thousands of people subscribed to his newsletter. He had, from his perspective, done nothing different.
In my dream Amos had aspirations of being a good, perhaps even a great, pianist. So he bought a piano. He worked through the same exercise books every day for months. He practiced the middle section of Clair de Lune seventy times a day even though it was out of his skill range. For a while, Amos did not see much improvement. But then he did. He was able to play Clair de Lune and impress all of his friends and family.
Amos lived, according to the ‘definition’ (which is not really the definition) of insanity, a crazy life. He spent so much of his time doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The only thing is… He did get different results. His life was insane. And it was good.
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When Pablo Casals, an all-time great cellist, was in his 90s, somebody asked him why he still practiced six hours per day. He responded, “I think I’m beginning to make some progress.”
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It’s not that I don’t understand the purpose of the fake insanity definition. Perhaps sometimes you should quit, and perhaps sometimes the reason you are not making any progress is that you aren’t changing your approach to the problem you are working on. Sometimes.
But I also think that many of the great things in this world, and much of the fulfillment you can achieve in your personal life, are a result of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That’s how you get better at most things. And that’s how you can achieve things that other people, people who are worried about being ‘insane,’ cannot.
And even if you truly aren’t making any progress, even if you’re posting the same kinds of essays online every day and don’t feel any sense of achievement, the world is not a vacuum. The variables are not all controlled. What flops on one day might go viral on another day, even if they are exactly the same product. Even if they are the same essay. Have a little faith.
Don’t be afraid to be insane. You might end up loving the result.
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